In recent years, vehicle drive supporting systems that include a camera mounted on the motor vehicle have been proposed. In many of these systems, a camera(s) is used to collect forward data in a vehicle running direction, e.g., forward direction, to provide information for safety to the driver and/or to facilitate automatically performing a vehicle control operation or the like.
Conventionally, a mounting structure that includes a camera housing is used to support the camera(s) in a predetermined position, e.g., forward facing position, on the motor vehicle. For example, the mounting structure can be used to mount one or more cameras on a backside (e.g., vehicle interior facing side) of a front windshield of the motor vehicle with the camera(s) facing forward to collect forward data in the vehicle running direction.
Stereo cameras (e.g., camera arrangements having a pair of cameras that can be mounted, for example, on a backside of a front windshield with one camera arranged proximate a left side and the other camera arranged proximate a right side of the motor vehicle) can be used to obtain distance measurements or the like. Camera housings, especially for stereo cameras, have very tight tolerances particularly after the cameras have been calibrated so that the optical centerlines of the cameras are parallel. The relative positions of the left and right cameras to each other must remain practically constant at all times to maintain optical centerline parallelism. Expansion and contraction of the camera housing due to temperature changes can be problematic if the relative positions of the left and right cameras are altered and their optical centerlines do not remain parallel. Additionally, the cameras need to be attached to the motor vehicle, e.g., on the backside of the vehicle windshield, in a way that the cameras remain steadily without substantial tipping, wobbling, or the like. Such attachment means should be simple, preferably without requiring any special tools and/or without deforming the camera housing when securing the camera housing to the motor vehicle, which might otherwise impair the parallelism of the optical centerlines of the cameras. Accordingly, there is a need to provide an apparatus for mounting a camera arrangement on a motor vehicle that can address one or more of the concerns.